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Hubertus Bigend: Every corporation has its share of dubious transactions going on. What is unusual in this case is that the Olympus board wasn't able to resolve it with Woodford like others would have done – with a golden handshake.

This and the matter itself – if an executive board directs their efforts primarily into constructing fishy acquisitions profitable for themselves in a way that nobody is supposed to find out – could very much account for many unintelligible decisions for their imaging division over the years, the latest being the ditching of their at the time perhaps most attractive DSLRs, the E-30 and the E-620, with the idea that Micro Four Thirds was ersatz enough already, which it wasn't and still isn't. But how should they have found time and energy for unimportant stuff like the products their manufacturing along the way?

So what happened to all the posters who said this was just the case of a disgruntled employee? If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, then it's massive accounting fraud unfortunately.